Please Tell Me If This Could Be Herpes - Herpes Message Board

ihopenot · 08-15-2003, 11:46 PM

Hello All, Please Read & Help Me???

I Dated this guy for 2 1/2 years, he was my first, everything was great, but we didn't trust each other so we split! A few weeks later one of my friends decided that we should go riding around w/ some guys, so we did. I never done drugs or anything, but she did and she wouldn't leave me alone so I did.(Some Friend) Then she leaves me, when I was so messed up that I couldn't even stand up. The other guy that was with me made me have sex with him, with me yelling for him to get away from me, my own friend was to busy w/ her own b/f she diddn't pay me no mind. A week later I was supposed to start my period, and I was like 13 days late, it really stressed me out, I got my first fever blister, and I think I never touched myself after touching my blister so I wasn't concerned. It's been almost a year, and now i have a bump down there and it kinda favors a pimple, and it does itch or anything, it just hurts to touch. Can anyone tell me If this could be herpes, and give me somemore symptoms to look for????

TheOneInFour · 08-16-2003, 01:06 AM

Hi IHopeNot,

Welcome to the board. I'm so sorry to hear your story.

First let me say I hope you have some good, active support for recovering from having been raped. If you don't have that, I really encourage you to see a counsellor for this. If you don't know where to find someone, call a rape crisis line and they will probably be able to refer you or help you find someone. They might be able to help you find medical support for your symptoms too, if you have trouble getting diagnosed.

Your symptoms might be a lot of things, only one of which could be herpes. One thing I'd recommend is to get a type-specific blood test for herpes. This can tell you what types of HSV you have. HSV-1 is something most of us have in the form of cold sores (a.k.a. fever blisters), usually caught in early childhood. You might have caught this from the man who raped you, or the stress of the incident might have simply brought out the virus you already had into an outbreak. There's no way to know for sure.

If he had genital HSV-2 (the most common cause of genital herpes, but sometimes is caused by HSV-1) and you caught this from him, then HSV-2 should show up in a type-specific blood test. It would pretty much confirm that's what your symptoms are. If you test negative for HSV-2, your symptoms still might be HSV-1 but a blood test won't tell you if you have it in more than one location (i.e., orally and genitally).

A swab test on relatively fresh symptoms (ideally within a couple of days of when they first appear) can potentially confirm that, but swabs are famous for being hard to get a positive diagnosis from. You might have to try several times before you get a positive diagnosis...assuming that's what you have.

Symptoms of herpes are a little different for everyone. Check out the Resource Links for this board, which can give you some good information about common symptoms. Herpes.org is a good site for solid information.

A doctor could possibly offer alternative diagnoses of what it is, if it's not herpes. Do see a doc ASAP so that you can find out what it is. Please let us know what you find out. Good luck!

TheOneInFour